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Friday, June 29, 2007

Hawkeye GOP: Amnesty is Dead

The Amnesty Bill is dead — at least for the time being. The people have spoken and for once the politicians listened. Even Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback who had voted for the previous cloture motion voted against it this time. Brownback's previous vote had helped revive the bill originally. Brownback felt that the bill could be amended into a more acceptable form. I don't know what convinced him. Perhaps he understood that no matter what the president called it, the bill was amnesty. Or maybe cynically, he understood that supporting amnesty would be fatal for a candidate attempting to claim the conservative mantle in the upcoming Republican primaries. The Brownback camp is in damage control mode. I have been receiving e-mails from the Brownback camp pointing out that the Senator voted against the cloture motion. In the e-mail the senator is quoted saying: “I voted against the Senate immigration bill because I am not convinced it would fix our broken immigration system and it would most likely repeat the mistakes of the 1986 reform…” I heard Ann Coulter on O'Reilly's show tonight. He pushed her to state that she opposes any plan that would allow someone here illegally to eventually become a citizen.